NOW Hunters Point is an innovative counter-point to traditional, top-down master planning processes. Working within a large post-industrial site with complex social and historical relationships to the surrounding community, NOW Hunters Point is framed around an incremental, community-led, design-forward approach. Utilizing an array of interim-use projects to gather and test ideas for the site’s future purpose, NOW Hunters Point works to cultivate a deeper and more substantive dialogue with the community.

The agility and flexibility of interim uses allows the project team to prototype and refine potential uses for the site—and encourages a crucial cycle of ongoing feedback. Insights gleaned from early interviews with key stakeholders informed the first interventions deployed on the site. The Listening Booth, where the stories of Bayview Hunters Point residents are recorded and shared through a partnership with StoryCorps, and site graphics painted with the help of local youth together established a venue for the wide range of programs that have followed.

Since NOW Hunters Point opened in 2013, the programs, which include job training, movie nights, festivals, community meetings and workshops serving all ages, have grown to more than 30 per year, drawing thousands of participants from the community. These participants in turn contribute to an ever growing body of data and feedback that ultimately shape the site’s ongoing development including projects such as streetscape and shoreline improvements currently underway.

By serving this combined mission of site management, stakeholder engagement, and partnership development, NOW Hunters Point actively works to connect productive activities in the present to sustainable opportunities for the future.

NOW Hunters Point is a collaboration of envelope A+D, Liz Ogbu (Studio O) and RHAA.

---

Press

CityLab - February 18, 2015

---